Stigweard

Yup I hear and like your take on the model. So we can see the possibility of making forays into the "unknown" in the "ordinary" sense of what Steve was talking about in terms of "thinking creatively, adopt new ideas and concepts, create beautiful art and science." Then we can experience the "unknown" in the "non-ordinary" sense of engaging latent or unused perceptions available to the human experience. Perceptions that would deliver partial or complete shifts in the way one views the world. Finally we have experiences of the "unknown" in the "super-natural" sense of having perceptions aligned that are completely outside the potential perception available to the human experience. How we doing? Oh, and I didn't want to get too much into shamanic journeys into the unknowable yet because I didn't want to mess with Mr Marble's blood pressure too much ... heheheh

Heheheh ... groovy. It's good that we are on the same page here ... quite a feat really for a religious and a philosophical Taoist The reason why I prefer to use you ming/wu ming is because it brings me back to home within my own perception. There is the known of the sum total of my current world view - the pinprick in the fabric or reality that I call my world. Then there is the unknown - the mysteriousness of the beyond that extends firstly out into things that I might possibly know someday, and then out to the things that I don't have a "beeswax on the surface of the sun's" chance of ever possibly knowing.

Yes it is quite sobering to see how easily it is to manipulate the way someone perceives reality. The truth is that if people's fixations to the "known" weren't as rigid as they are then I would be out of a job For example one of my signature pieces is a classic cut-n-restored rope routine. People have a very ingrained belief about what a piece of rope can and can't do, so when a piece of rope, which they can handle and examine at all times, is visibly severed in two and then restored into one piece right before their eyes then their brain goes, "WTF?!!" And in my years of experience people will always react in the ways I mentioned previously: Some will believe they know the truth of what happened immediately. Some will deny it ever happened. Some will get obsessed with questions. Personally I love it when they react in the last way because it usually is, "No f**king way!!! How the f**k did you do that?!!!"

Yup ... and here we see the fuzzy line of reality because already we have several slightly different perceptions of the original model ... all of which are valid and all yielding important insight to give us a more holistic vision. "How does the mind conceptualize that which it does not know/contain/perceive?" This is a vital question and links to my topic's title of "How to handle the unknown." I would like to speak to this and other comments, but I must be off for my morning Tai Chi class.

Wouldn't that just tear a hole in your knickers!

I wonder how many people actually read the opening posts ??

Agreed, agreed, agreed !!! As always I value your input Steve.

LOL no, no, no Mr Marbles ... I am not talking about man creating anything here. I believe this comes back to our different interpretations of you 有 and wu 無. You are seeing it as the manifest reality and the unmanifest reality ... either being a "thing" in the physical, natural sense, or being a "no thing". And I truly respect and understand your view on this ... I am even inclined to agree with you I am quite clearly looking at Laozi's ch1 as You ming 有名 and Wu ming 無名 ... that which is conceptually described versus that which lays outside of conceptual description. To me this is a much more practical way of looking at it, practical in terms of something that I can use for my cultivation. The earth, matter, stars, rocks etc etc are there independent on man's existence ... no arguments there. What I am alluding to here is that the over-development of our rational, conceptual faculties, coupled with the intense social conditioning we are exposed to, sunders our natural holistic view of the world (a view that sees things in their full spectrumed wholeness), effectively blinkering and filtering our perception so that we only see a very narrow and distorted bandwith of reality. This sliver of "what is" we mistakenly call reality and it is this that I am referring to as "the known". Not "all that can be known" mind you. Just "the known" as we chose to view it. So in essence we are all walking around with our head in a bubble of perceptual filters and conceptualizations. We may see a chair, but the raw sensory data passes through our fixated conceptual filters so that, in the end, the chair we end up "seeing" is not really the chair that's there (I am a professional magician after all and I exploit this human trait quite well ). So in actual fact we could go as far as to say that there is: ~ The Known - in terms of the conceptual descriptions that form our view of the world which is only a sliver of the holistic view possible to the human experience ~ The Unknown - the rest of the bandwith of perception possible to the human experience but which currently remains outside of the narrow bandwidth currently perceived. ~ The Unknowable - the possibilities of perception that lay outside the human experience which, if they were perceived, would necessitate the perceiver to not be human anymore. So from a practical point of view, if we are truly to see our chair truly as the chair is, in other words to see the full spectrum or plain wholeness of the chair, then we must soften our calcified descriptions of the chair and simply and quietly view the chair as it is. In essence we are broadening our view to encapsulate more of the "unknown" into our perception.

And I am not trying to allude to any "we create the world but when our back is turned the world is no longer there" presumption. Again "the known" as I am referring to it, is about you ming, to have name. It is about the descriptives and internal dialogue we use to uphold our view of the world. You and I might look at the same chair and interpret it differently based on our internal construct of conceptualizations. You may look at it and get a nostalgic feeling because it reminds you of the chair your Aunty Esmaralda once had when you were a boy. I might look at it and think, "Wow if I sanded that back and put of bit of stain on it then it would probably sell quite well at an antique auction." Same chair but because of different conceptual filtering two versions of the same base reality is formed. But the chair is still just a chair. If we are to truly become ziran/tzu jan/self-so and see reality for its plain truth these constructs of what we uphold as "known" must dissolve and dissipate.

LOL to you and me its just a chair ... but to an aboriginal in central Australia it's firewood

Aye ... I love compost

I think the question here is, "From where do preferences arise?" The "ideal", if there is such a thing, is for the known and the unknown to have the same interplay as the Yin/Yang symbol. I would not however attach your conceptual associations of "lost, unclear, floundering, suffering, drowning" to the unknown. I could quite easily use other conceptual terms of "liberating, exhilarating, pervasive, flying free, wondrous."

Please don't get me wrong here, I actually agree with 99.9% of the sentiments made in that post. You are right that what we think we "know" is founded, at best, on shifting sand. I just see an incongruity between your statements on one hand that there are no fixed basis for what we may "know," versus your previous statements that promote the correctness and "naturalness" of making preferences. Especially when making preferences, by necessity, require us to fixate to a conceptual description of what we think we know. My term "fixated conceptual descriptions" is the best wordage I have found to articulate, at least to me, the process or phenomena of what I see as "the known/you ming/to have name". Fixated means that the particular way of seeing the world is "stuck", that it is habitually ingrained, that there is little or no variation away from that way of seeing the world. Conceptual because it is a mental construct. Descriptions because this way of seeing the world is upheld by the naming (and subsequent incessant internal dialogue) of the elements of that mental construct. And you are right that these "fixated conceptual descriptions" are very much "blinders" to the multi-spectrumed reality of the "now" moment. You have my full agreement that, in reality, "this moment itself is utterly unknown". But 99.9% of people desperately need the security of believing that they know, and so they collectively cling to their conceptual descriptions of their world, reinforce it with each other and themselves and this "collective hunch" is the "reality" of our culture ... it becomes the "island of the known". Now as Mr Marbles has accurately said, there does seem to be some basic universal laws of nature that apply to every one. And so my view is that the path of Dao is about dissolving the "fixated conceptual descriptions," which really are just the artificial decorations on our "island of the known" (mind you I do like that fountain over by the waterfall ), and bring ourselves back to the unadorned state of ziran, self-so-ness. Not to abolish the island completely mind you, but just minimize it's harsh features and harmonize how all the features interact with each other so that our personality (which really is just the expression or "face" of our "known") is peaceful and calm. But there is another, less altruistic, and perhaps more practical reason for this process of "feng shui of the island of the known." I personally view the message of Laozi as saying that, because wu ming and you ming are polarity aspects of the subtle reality of Dao, the wayfarer must encapsulate both in their perception and awareness. But this is simply not possible in any way shape or form if you are excessively constrained within "you ming/to have name/the known". To me the balance is to have a minimal, fluid and well integrated "known," whilst allowing a liberated and pervasive "wu ming/no name/the unknown".

LOL ... indeed I have also heard it referred to as "controlled folly".

Yup, reality after all is just a collective hunch Huzzah!!! Yes agreed ... when we realize that "the known" is just a whole conglomerate of conceptual assumptions we can start to loosen our fixations of what we think we "know" and relax into the incredible, wondrous, mystery of it all.

Huzzah!!!

Nice words but do you really mean them? I remember you saying with conviction that preferences are natural and that the impartial view that you described above is actually somehow "inhuman". What is a preference after all? It is a discriminatory elevation of one thing over another based on one's own view of the world ... a view that comprises of fixated conceptual descriptions. And it is this that I am referring to as "The Known". From my view, it is not the physical chair that is "you ming/the known," but is instead our fixated perception and associated conceptions of that chair.

LOL you are like a little fat kid on the beach sprouting all the safe and logical reasons why going for a swim is such a "bad" idea hehehehe

Good o ... I guess you could regard the instructions as weidan falling into the category of it "could" be symbolic speech for neidan practices. So fair comments. What then about the nei yeh 內業 ?? I know Kirkland dates it's authorship 350-300 BCE < http://kirkland.myweb.uga.edu/rk/pdf/pubs/ref/NEIYEH98.pdf > And if this is to be credibly discounted also, how do you account for the development of neidan for it to have "emerged" in the 8th century?

Bahahahaha !!! You are RIGHT!!! Corrected

I'd like to continue the discussion... @ Marblehead... The process of human progression via forays into the unknown are very much the same as evolution via genetic mutation. Random offshoots will occur, but if these mutations lack in substance and fortitude then they will quickly die off. But the only way for these mutations to explore the full length of their potential is for "caution" to be abandoned and full commitment made. In this sense I say, "Imagine boldly and freely!" However, as in the analogy I have given above, for any mutation to have practical worth it must find context within the contemporary paradigm of "normality". Another slant on this is that the known is like a pathway to a cliffs edge over the abyss of the unknown. Sure we must take inventory of every detail of every step leading to the edge. But once we get there there is naught to do but JUMP! @ aridus You are right, we can't control the unknown. When I say "handling the unknown" I am more saying "how do we handle ourselves in the face of the unknown?" For example, when encountering the unknown most people will react in a number of ways. Some will believe they know the truth of what happened immediately. Some will deny it ever happened. Some will get obsessed with questions. However, my view is that the "right" way to handle the unknown is to neither believe nor disbelieve. This is founded on the view that the universe is infinitely more mysterious than I could possibly imagine. So what I "believe" to be the truth is only a sliver of the multi-spectrumed reality of what is. Now let's say, for example, I have an incredible vision whilst meditating. If I straight away say, "This is what it means" then I could limit myself to further understanding. If I write it off as "just a figment of my imagination" I could likewise miss the knowledge it carries. If I get obsessed with questioning every part of it I would just break it apart into so many conceptualized components that the holistic meaning is also lost. So my attitude is to accept the face value of a mysterious occurrence by saying, "That's interesting", but then to ignore the face value, acting as if one is in complete control, to allow the flow of knowledge and perception to run it's full course so that the whole experience is absorbed.

aridus responded:

Marblehead responded:

This is an interesting statement. I would be interested to hear how you discount the Baopuzi 抱朴子, authored by Ge Hong 葛洪 (283-343). The inner chapters are rich with content about the procurement of Jindan 金丹, the Golden Elixir, and the achievement of Shen Xian 神仙, Heavenly Immortality.